Sunday, March 31, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: The miracle that is "system restore". If I'd thought to try a system restore on my work computer when the problem first reared it's head, I'd have saved myself two and a half hours wasted time / frustration. On days like this, I hate OpenOffice Base with it's indecipherable error messages. At least my precious data survived the experience in-tact.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: That the sushi shop I frequent is open tomorrow! With Easter weekend, there was a 50/50 chance that it would be closed. Being able to enjoy sushi for breakfast on a Saturday morning is one of life's little pleasures. Being so close to Asia helps - and said sushi is fresh, authentic and really, really good.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: Mid-Term break - as in five glorious days in which I don't need to go to school. Let's just say this term has been very long and the work is relentless - so having time to breathe / catch up is exactly what is needed right now.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: Semi-soft butter. Bought some today to have on matzos (which was shared with dance group) - provided it's at room temperature, it's easy to spread and combined with salt and matzos, it tastes like heaven.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Here is the 8th in the series. The image at the bottom left is was taken by istolethetv and was made available under the creative commons 2.0 license. The QR code at the top right will take viewers to my "Jewish" set.

Today's Gratitude Item: Freedom! It's wonderful to live in a country like New Zealand where we enjoy all the so called 'basic' freedoms. At a time like this, it's a good thing to appreciate what one has. Pesach Sameach everyone.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: A great 'gig' (which included some unexpected free parking). Had my first ever 'gig' teaching Israeli dance at a cocktail event. The Jews Bros had been asked to play at the event but the organisers wanted some Israeli dance taught as well - so the band contacted me, we got together and to cut a long story short things went really well and a great time was had by all. One unexpected good thing was that as I was standing at the parking 'pay and display' machine, a random stranger who had made a mistake and bought too much parking earlier in the day gave me their pay / display ticket as they were leaving. Basically this means that instead of paying $25 for parking - I got it for free. Being on the receiving end of 'random kindness' made the evening that much sweeter.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: That school paid for my NZACDITT* membership. I was worried that the payment had not gone through but it turns out that everyone on 'my side' did the right thing. Things are slightly more complex on the NZACDITT side but the people running the show are all over-worked volunteers so some 'hiccups' are par for the course.

*NZACDITT stands for New Zealand Association of Digital Information Technology Teachers - why they went for such a complicated name remains a mystery.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: Being able to literally make up a 'play list' of dance songs 'on the go'. Playing our music off an Android is so much better than the iPod (or old style CD's). Gotta love technology.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: Discovering the power of praise. This is probably incredibly obvious to most teachers but I've finally gotten into the hang of praising my students when they do small things right - this has lead to them building momentum and doing bigger things right. The atmosphere in class is really positive and everyone who turns up regularly is doing well.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: Getting wet when walking. Given that the entire North Island has been declared a drought area, getting wet whilst walking has suddenly become desirable! I'm really hoping it will rain so hard tomorrow that walking in the morning will not be an option.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: Scheduling "catch up time" for my 11th graders. It turns out that they are all on a field trip tomorrow and many of them will be away for the rest of the week on various school related activities. Basically this means that those who are 'out' won't miss any new teaching. The weird thing is, I had no idea so many of them would be away so things working out well in this case is a result of luck rather than good planning.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: Finally creating some illustrations / new fractals. In the month since we started school, have not had time to do anything creative "for me". I still don't really have the time but decided that this weekend, school work was going to be neglected in favour of creativity. It was a good decision.

Friday, March 08, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: That my google advertising (at the bottom of this page) finally made it over the $100.00 mark. It has taken almost 5 years to get to this point (ie: since May 2008). This does answer the question over whether the adverts are worth it - they are, but they don't quite cover the cost of hosting my images at flickr in the long term.

Today's Gratitude Item: Being able to buy resources for my Computing class. I simply don't have the time to make them and have finally figured out which commercial resources are the best for my students.

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: That at least one of my students has given himself the task of spending 30 minutes a day on Code Academy. His eventual plan is to become a game developer and being able to point him in the right direction is quite exciting.

Monday, March 04, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: That my dad did not go to an office event last Friday. Said event was a black tie affair but my dad is semi-retired and he takes Fridays off - so he opted not to go. Turns out that 28 of the people who went ended up with a very nasty case of food poisoning. Several ended up in the ER (and it was not pretty). It's near misses like these that make one grateful for the simple things in life - like home cooked meals which are not toxic.

Sunday, March 03, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item:Code Academy. Finally we have a relatively painless way to learn basic programming. This one is great because it's something that my students can do without any extra input from me. It's a pity that aside from teaching kids how to write html / css we don't teach them any real programming at my school (long story). At least now, those who are that way inclined have an effective tool that they can use to teach themselves.

Friday, March 01, 2013

Today's Gratitude Item: For Friday morning tea, one of my colleagues made savoury filled pancakes (which tasted incredible). The nice thing was that she made a special vegetarian version for me because she knows that I don't eat pork. It's really wonderful when people care enough to cater for all tastes - it was not expected but it was an extremely kind gesture.